


What You Die For

by Barkour



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, We're Alive Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:38:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6549028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick has a little bit of a rough time after the encounter with Negan. (After 6x16. Speculative.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Die For

**Author's Note:**

> After Negan kills one of Our Own.

They gave Glenn to the Hilltop, and Maggie stayed with him. Sweat sheeted her face, "but least the contractions stopped." It was blood and split skin that marked Glenn's face. The Hilltop's doctor worked at him. 

"Maybe we should all stay," said Michonne lowly. 

Her eyes flicked to Sasha, at work in the yard methodically taking apart her rifle then piecing it together then stripping it again. The trailers made a circle around her. The moon's wan light caught in her hair. Abraham's blood had dried on her fingers, her face, her nape where she'd made his limp hand touch her last. 

Leave him alone. Kill me, I'm the one blew your damn soldier boys to hell. Abraham had laughed in Negan's face.

Sasha turned the chamber in hand then fitted it in place once more.

"We got trailers," offered a woman. "Space enough for some to sleep inside."

Rick spoke roughly. "We're going home."

"You're leaving us," said Maggie.

Carl with watchful eyes waited perched on the steps. 

"I'm not leaving you."

"But you're not staying."

He moved to her. He spoke low. "I got to get them back to Alexandria. Hilltop is safe for you. They'll take care of Glenn."

Maggie looked to her husband. His breath was a gurgle. On the gurney he looked a broken sack of bones stuck on top of a man. Daryl, field-dressed, stared at Glenn like a man emptied.

"No," she said. "I understand. You take them home."

He nodded. She looked to his arm then briefly she smiled at Rick. Her lips pinched. Maggie stood heavily and went into the trailer again to sit beside Glenn. The doctor said, "Close the door."

Michonne caught Rick's arm. Her fingers slipped down the length of it. He turned to her without intent. The smell of her hair caught him. A vanilla smell, under even the blood and the grime and the sweat of her scalp. Her breath warmed his chin. His little finger twitched.

"I think we should stay. For Maggie and Glenn."

"We need to get home."

"Judith is safe."

Rick lifted his head and looked about the colony, the pale trailers, the flattened ground, the people huddled and waiting. The disassembled rifle clicked in Sasha's hands as she began putting together its parts. 

His throat worked. He felt the sweat still on his skin. The salt that chafed it. They looked to him like Carl did, waiting for his order. He stood there. 

Half a chill was in the air. Autumn was on its way. Soon the ground would harden and the green would flee, and dark clouds fat with snow would move over distant mountains.

An ugly thing sat in his throat. What do you want from me? He clenched his hands and eased them. 

Michonne said quietly, "Rick."

"We stay the night," said Rick. To the Hilltop representatives he said, "If your people will have us."

They separated in small groups to sleep in trailers, on the floor where they had to if beds were not given. Sasha said, "I'm staying out here."

Rick lingered with Carl as Michonne spoke.

"Don't do this to yourself again."

"Not your life." Sasha's lip furled. "You still have your family."

Michonne drew closer to her. Their voices dropped.

"Dad," said Carl.

Rick rubbed at his face and said, "Yeah."

"Dad." Carl's face was thin and white beneath the filth. He did not blink. "We're going to kill him." 

"Go inside, Carl." 

He said it too harshly, but Carl did not flinch. Understanding showed somewhere under the coldness.

"He'll die." Carl said, "I'm going to make sure of it."

"Get inside," said Rick, "and don't you think of anything. You empty your head and you sleep."

Carl looked at him. He said, "I'll kill him, Dad," and he turned from Rick and clomped up the steps to the trailer in boots too heavy for a boy so young. His head hung. His shoulders did not stoop. 

A warm hand stroked his shoulder. The women had parted. Sasha, her rifle slung to her back, climbed a ladder to stand watch on top of the medical trailer. 

Rick looked down to Michonne, her keen eyes, her rich mouth, the locs unsettled around her dark face. His fingers were twitching again. She jerked her head. The gesture directed away, across the camp.

"C'mon."

He pitched his thumb over his shoulder. "Carl's in there."

"Carl doesn't need to hear this."

A storage trailer, half-filled. The woman had whispered of it to Michonne as the Hilltop colonists had led Rick's people to their end-of-the-world suites. 

He closed the door. Her hands were in his jacket lapels. Michonne kissed him as desperately as he kissed her. In the blackness of the trailer he pulled ungently at her shirt; she ripped the belt from his jeans. 

"Thought you were dead." 

He'd held her locs in his hand. That vanilla smell. The texture of them between his fingers and thumb.

"I'm not dead." She kicked her jeans away as he yanked his shirt from his shoulders. "Get over here."

He still had his jeans on, she had her worn-out bra. Michonne grabbed his head in her hands and kissed him wetly, hotly, mouth open and tongue roiling. Rick ripped at her underwear and hauled her legs up around him as they fell against the stacked crates. 

The trailer smelled of dried pasta, tin, cardboard and dust. Rick buried his face in Michonne's throat, the locs that had gathered at her shoulder. 

"Stop wasting time," she told him. Her hand slipped between them. 

"You're not ready."

The fatness of his cock, the hardness, the force of the erection: all of it horrible. He saw the bat. He saw her locs, stuck on the walker. She's dead and they're dead. What do you want from me?

"I'm good enough."

He mouthed at her neck. Her hair scratched at his lips, his tongue. 

"Not yet."

She turned her head to catch his mouth. The movement of her tongue on his teeth. Her teeth, in his lips. The smell of her sweat, the oil she'd worked into her locs that morning when they'd woke together in bed and she smiled at him and said no. He groaned.

"I want you to fuck me," said Michonne. 

So he did. He shoved into her, Michonne's legs at his waist, her back to the crates. She made a low sound in her throat, a thing like a moan. And shit, she was wet after all. Her arms encircled his neck. Her fingers clutched in his hair. Rick mirrored her with one hand, clutching her gathered locs in his hand as he fucked her. 

Her toes curled. He felt them on his thigh. He clasped her ass and kissed her; he kissed her again; he could not stop kissing her.

"I'm right here," she said into his mouth. "I'm here."

She was slick and hot, contracting around him. Her hips jerked against him. She broke the kiss to nuzzle at his cheek, and Rick made a sound that was nothing like a groan. 

"It's all right." She bit his cheek. He gasped, shaking, again, and pounded harder into her. "I want this. I want you here with me."

"You were dead." It ripped from him. He had to rest his forehead against her shoulder. "I wasn't there--"

"You weren't," she said, "but you weren't supposed to be."

The sunlight had limned her. In the bed, in their bed, he'd kissed her sweet, dark shoulder to her throat. He'd smelled her hair and felt her in his arms, her back a soft curve against his chest. The little murmur in her throat as she stirred. The muscles in her arms but the delicacy of her waking.

Michonne's fingernails raked his scalp. She hauled on his curls so he had no choice but to lift his head. His lips were slicked. 

She said, "And I couldn't stop him from hurting you," with her lips twisted and her eyes creased. Then, in the unkindness of this, she pulled him to her to reclaim his mouth.

They spoke little after that. Her touches alternated between mercy and that raking. He wanted both. The heat in his belly would not abate. More ugliness worming inside him. Her elbows bent. Her arms cradled his head. It was not groaning but something like sobbing.

Harder, harder. He hitched her up. Michonne moaned and rolled against him. Her head fell back. He bent to her throat, and he kissed it softly. One kiss, two, three. 

Her sweat. Her hair. Her throat. Her voice. Michonne, surrounding him. Protect her. Protect this. 

Did she come? Somewhere in all this? He thought she did. He felt her warmth, the deep clenching around his aching cock as he thrust and thrust, jogging her in his arms. The wetness around him. 

Protect this. He'd seen how Michonne had looked at Negan with war on her face. I'll kill him, Dad. Rick would do it. He'd tear Negan's throat out and regret none of it. This is my family and you cannot have it.

What would you die for? Would you die for them?

"We're gonna live," said Rick. "We're gonna _live_."

Michonne stroked his cheek with her hand. He kissed her wrist. It was tenderness, there. A sadness marked her eyes, but it was not for him. It was not for her.

"We'll do it together," said Michonne.

Rick kissed her bruisingly. He shoved into her a last time. He came like so, in the sudden stillness as they kissed and her locs brushed his shoulder and he smelled the sweat, and old blood, and dry spaghetti stacked in a crate, and vanilla somewhere under all of this.

He set her down with care. Michonne cupped his jaw. They leaned together there in the aftermath of everything. 

"We're okay," she said.

He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to her head. "That for me? Or you?"

Michonne said, "For us."

He swayed once, holding her. He thought of their bed, and he thought of the morning sun coming through the window, and he thought of Glenn bleeding and Sasha standing with her rifle above the camp. A wicked man to thank God it wasn't Michonne dead at Negan's hand, or Carl.

"Yeah," he said. "We're okay."


End file.
